One Moms Quest to Contain the Chaos

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Instead Of Standing There With The Refrigerator Door Open, Try This!

Ever stand there in front of the refrigerator with the door open, hoping that something delicious and already prepared jumps out at you?

And when that doesn’t happen, do you come back 5 minutes later hoping that somehow, magically, the status of the contents of your refrigerator has changed?

Me, too.

There is nothing worse than being hungry for a snack and not quickly finding what you want.

Oh, wait. There IS something worse! Having hungry children standing behind you whining, “but I’m SOOOO HUNGRY!”, “I need a snack right now!”, “why don’t we ever have anything to eat?”, “you never let me eeeeaaaattt!”.

That’s right. Hungry, tired kids need food. Now. Not in 5 minutes. Unless you are partial to maniacal tyrants running around the house shoving slices of bread in their face and sneaking containers of pudding snacks out in the backyard behind a tree. True story.

Sure, you can tell me all about how you set up these perfect meal schedules. 7am breakfast/10am snack/12pm lunch/2pm snack/5pm dinner and they never get anything in between.

Bullshit. Either you are packing their snack full of valium so they are too loopy to ask for a snack right after they finished their snack, or you are telling one big fib.

Kids think they are hungry ALL. THE. TIME.

Of course they are not really hungry all the time, but sometimes they are bored and what do YOU do when you are bored? Have a snack. What- don’t even tell me you have never had a snack when you weren’t hungry, just bored. If so, stop reading right here because you do not need this post to make you feel good.

The rest of you, stay right here and know you are in good company.

I have a schedule for meals, of course I do. However, I also have times where I am trying to fold laundry or go to the bathroom and my kid is telling me for the bazillionth time how hungry she is and not for fruit but for bread and can she puhleeeeeese! have some bread? So before I start tearing my hair out I throw her a dinner roll like she is some sort of begging duck at the duck pond that won’t leave me alone, except this time I am not 2 years old and I didn’t fall in and sit there all wet and pitiful while my mom took pictures and video. Also a true story.

But I am getting off topic.

I THINK what I am trying to say is that in order to have quick, tasty snacks available for your kids you need to prepare. So where else do you go to find a quick, tasty, toddler friendly snack?

Hi Pinterest!

Yes, I know- you all (especially my mom) were thinking I would say I’d be checking out one of my 100,000 cookbooks. But no. I need a quick idea, with pictures. So off to Pinterest I go, confident I will come away with dozens of kid-friendly ideas for snacks that I can whip up and never worry about snack time again!

What I found is that pretty much all snack ideas were the same and that apparently it’s all about the PRESENTATION. Here are the top 5 snack ideas I found on Pinterest:

1. Put it on a stick. Cheese, fruit, veggies- just put it on a stick and they will eat it. I’m not saying putting food on a stick isn’t a good idea. Have you ever been to a renaissance festival? They put EVERYTHING on a stick. Turkey legs, corn dogs, ice cream. It’s an idea that works across ages. Except for the small fact that just because it is on a stick is NOT GOING TO TRICK THOSE TYRANTS. They will look at the cute veggie rainbow on a stick and declare it “gross” and start using it as a light saber.

2. Make it look like an animal. Seems like moms of picky eaters will go to extreme measures to get their kids to eat a healthy snack. Turning cucumber slices and tomatoes into caterpillars; turn pears and apples into circus animals. The intricacy of putting these “snacks” together all but ensure that your child will not touch it. Because I have found that the longer a meal takes to make, the less likely your child is to eat it. And I am not going to spend time cutting tiny pieces of olives into the shape of a lambs eyebrow, sorry.

3. Put it in a nifty container. This is actually quite quick and easy. Put that healthy snack is a cute, fun container, like a waffle cone, or a cupcake wrapper decorated with their favorite cartoon character! But you know what, they still have carrot sticks inside them that your kid won’t touch.

4. Cut food into fun shapes with cookie cutters. Butterflies, dolphins, cats, dinosaurs…just cut those zucchini into fun shapes and they will eat them! Wait, no they won’t because you know why? The fun shapes are made out of “gross!!!” zucchini.

Fun shapes AND on a stick!

5. Skip straight to the drinks section. That’s right, I could only take so much looking at fruit intricately arranged in the shape of zoo animals before I started needing a drink. But good lord have you seen all the drink recipes they have?! Now those are worthy of my time! Just throw back one of those while you throw your kid an apple and you’ll be able to drown our your kids starving cries.

Guess which one of these recipes is going to get tried first?

Ha! That’s right! Cheers!

*you can click on the pictures for links to the sites for recipes if you are so inclined.

What are your go to snacks? Have you ever tried any from Pinterest? Would love to see pics!